Talking Carbon Tonight on Colbert

Former Time magazine-reporter-turned-environmental-policy-analyst Eric Roston will make his Colbert Report debut tonight talking about his new book, The Carbon Age.

Science Progress featured an interview with Roston earlier this month that ranged across the various scientific fields connected by the carbon atom. He explained why he wanted to write the book like this:

The book is also an attempt to say, “Alright look, lets just take a breather here for a second. Lets peel back some of these categories, look at something very fundamental, and see if we can’t come up with a way to rethink the way we think about the world.” If you retreat to carbon, which is the central structural element of all life and civilization, and you build up from the central element of our civilization, then you understand how energy and climate and personal health and industrial materials are all far more interrelated and interconnected than we give them credit for.

Roston isn’t the only science expert to sit down with Stephen Colbert in recent months. Physicist and author Brian Greene talked about the World Science Festival back in May. Contributing Editor Chris Mooney pointed out that talking science in such a hip setting is just what the Ph.D. ordered: “We can’t simply assume that traditional science journalists will carry the message of science to the whole population. Rather, we need almost the reverse process—for science to bring its message to the entirety of the media.”

So tune in to Comedy Central at 11:30 p.m. EST tonight and learn how carbon organizes your life.

Update: Watch Eric talk about how “carbon is not the enemy”:

Tags: Climate Change, Media

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